Trump Spent Years Encouraging Violence Against His “Enemies”—Today, It Came in the Mail

A series of explosive devices were sent to the homes of the Obamas, the Clintons, and the Manhattan offices of CNN on Wednesday morning—on the heels of a pipe bomb mailed to philanthropist and top Democratic donor George Soros on Monday afternoon. Another suspicious package, intended for former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, was wrongly addressed and ended up at the presumably falsified return address of Democratic Florida Rep. and former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. (The packages sent to Obama, Clinton, and Soros bore the same return address.) Rep. Maxine Waters said she was told by police her “office was the target of a suspicious package” that was intercepted and then referred to the FBI this afternoon. It was unclear if the package contained an explosive device. Thankfully, no one was killed or hurt: The Secret Service intercepted the packages at the Obama and Clinton homes in Washington, D.C., and Chappaqua, New York, respectively; a police bomb squad responded to the Soros residence in Bedford, New York, and CNN and the surrounding Time Warner Center were evacuated—while correspondents were still on the air—as investigators launched a probe into who was responsible.

The person or people who mailed the devices are singularly to blame for that evil. But when it comes to which world leader is spewing violent rhetoric, celebrating assault, and regularly demonizing the media—and CNN in particular—well, we know who’s responsible for that. The White House condemned the attacks in a statement, saying, “These terrorizing acts are despicable and anyone responsible will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.” But President Donald Trump’s own words can speak louder than his administration’s official script. When some of his favorite targets are targeted themselves, it’s fair to question if—and how—the president is setting a dangerous tone. As absurd as his words can be, we shouldn’t be shocked if those words appear to have consequences.

Or, as The View cohost Sunny Hostin quoted a former CNN colleague as saying after the bomb threats: “This is what happens when the president calls you the ‘enemy of the people.’ ”

It should be lost on no one that those who were sent pipe bombs have a few key things in common: the Clintons, Obamas, and Soros are all high-profile Democrats; CNN is a network accused of Democratic bias. And all of the parties—the Clintons, Obamas, Soros, Waters, and CNN—are preferred punching bags of the president. Trump has spread the racist, birther conspiracy theory about Barack Obama; threatened to “lock up” Hillary Clinton; tweeted the lie that Soros paid anti–Brett Kavanaugh protesters, and, according to Soros’s son, Alexander, used thinly veiled anti-Semitic language about his father. “Mr. Trump’s final TV ad famously featured my father; Janet Yellen, chairwoman of the Federal Reserve; and Lloyd Blankfein, chairman of Goldman Sachs—all of them Jewish—amid dog-whistle language about ‘special interests’ and ‘global special interests,’ ” the younger Soros wrote in a New York Times op-ed published on Wednesday after the bomb threat.

In addition to that infamous February 2017 tweet branding “the fake news media” as “the enemy of the American people,” Trump consistently lambasts the press and CNN in particular, sometimes going as far as to celebrate aggression. At an August rally in Pennsylvania, he took his usual “fake news” narrative up a notch, calling members of the media “disgusting,” and “horrible, horrendous people”; the crowd responded by jeering, “CNN sucks” and heckling CNN’s Jim Acosta. Just last week at a rally in Montana, Trump praised Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte, who was arrested for assaulting a reporter last year, saying, “Any guy who can do a body slam, he’s my guy.” (And just in case you’re wondering if Trump later realized he was cheering assault and backpedaled, he did not.)

These comments are characteristic of a president who traffics in hate, and has been known to encourage and/or laud violence; who in 2016 gave supporters at a rally his blessing to beat up anti-Trump protesters: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, okay? Just knock the hell . . . I promise you I will pay for the legal fees.” That same year, he chastised security at a Las Vegas rally for being too gentle on a protester: “He’s walking out with big high fives, smiling, laughing,” Trump said. “I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you.”

Far be it from anyone to wonder about the connection—if not the direct line—you can draw from Trump’s suggestions of violence to the actual violence threatened against his very opponents. “The crowd was obviously eating this stuff up, and people wonder whether or not there’s a cause and effect, whether or not the president’s rhetoric plants seeds of violence in his own supporters, in his own crowds,” Acosta said after last week’s Montana rally. Trump himself has speculated on the power of passionate words to incite violence . . . when it is politically advantageous for him and his base. He has blamed Black Lives Matter, which does not advocate for violence against police whatsoever, for instigating the deaths of police officers.

To be clear, this is not to say that Trump is in direct contact with the pipe bomb–makers. But he very well may be providing already unhinged people with a motivational spark, if not what sounds an awful lot like the express permission of the purported leader of the free world. “The Capital Gazette shootings earlier this year and the murder of TV reporter Alison Parker live on air were both examples of the regular kinds of risks that journalist face: angry, crazy readers or story subjects and a constant opportunity for a maniac to achieve instant publicity for a brutal act. That’s always there,” wrote Hamilton Nolan in an August Splinter story on this topic, titled “Someone Is Going to Get Killed.” “Today, though, we have the whole ‘enemy of the people’ thing. All the maniacs now have a hard-to-resist political motive.”

In the aftermath of the suspicious packages on Wednesday, arch-Republican spin almost instantly began to frame the pipe bombs—perfectly functional explosives packed with projectiles including shards of glass—as no big deal. “None of the leftists ostensibly targeted for pipe-bombs were actually at serious risk, since security details would be screening their mail,” mused Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security (security!) Policy, a far-right think tank. “Let’s determine not only who is responsible for these bombs, but whether they were trying to deflect attention from the left’s mobs.”

This type of vile response should be a reminder that Trump’s appetite for violence is complemented by a hearty dose of hypocrisy. Note that Republicans have balked and cried the victim over—horror of horrors—Sarah Huckabee Sanders being denied a farm-to-table meal. In a remarkable moment of hypocrisy, when Fox News broke the story of the bomb threats on the air on Wednesday, anchors had to interrupt a diatribe on the “incivility” of a “left-wing mob.” Their offense? Not praising a man for body slamming a reporter, or pontificating on punching someone, or even crowing about how they’re going to throw their opponents in jail. No, it was a group who heckled Mitch McConnell in a restaurant.

The Clintons, Obamas, the staff of CNN, Holder, and the others mailed suspicious packages will return home and will hopefully stay safe, the news cycle will churn on, but today’s incident should remain “profoundly disturbing—as a threat not just to the safety of our family, neighbors, colleagues, and friends, but also to the future of American democracy,” Alexander Soros wrote today, hailing his father as a someone compelled to help others through his philanthropy.

“While the responsibility lies with the individual or individuals who sent these lethal devices to my family home and Mr. Obama’s and Ms. Clinton’s offices, I cannot see it divorced from the new normal of political demonization that plagues us today,” Soros said. “We must find our way to a new political discourse that shuns the demonization of all political opponents. A first step would be to cast our ballots to reject those politicians cynically responsible for undermining the institutions of our democracy. And we must do it now, before it is too late.”